Spaces in File Names

[Doc]

Hi All
Actinic complains about spaces in file names and folders...is this a real issue...I have hundreds of images and I dont want to hit a problem during upload...Actinic says some browsers do not support spaces in file and folder names...!!!!! . Any input will be greatly appreciated

TIA

[wjcampbe]

The specification for URLs (RFC 1738, Dec. '94) limits the use of allowed characters in URLs to only a limited subset of the US-ASCII character set:
"...Only alphanumerics [0-9a-zA-Z], the special characters $-_.+!*'(), and reserved characters used for their reserved purposes may be used unencoded within a URL."

Best to use hyphens to fill the space - consider these two links

http://www.egytpianwonders.co.uk/acatalog/glass perfume bottles.html
http://www.egyptianwonders.co.uk/aca...e-bottles.html

which would you rather was emailed by your visitors to their friends?

[Doc]

Bill
Thanks..its not a URL...its a file path name. I think the old days of DOS and small file names have gone...
If Windows accepts these kind of file names , I cant see why actinic would complain...is unfortunate but I have to reedit 100s of file names...
cheers

[Coggy]

Hi

Bill is right; A URL is essentially a file path name and although your Windows based machine may be able to cope with the path names being used, lots of servers are non-Windows based. In order to help provide portability and accessibility, Actinic will complain about use of non-standard characters. Although the process of renaming items may seem like a lot of extra work now, it will reduce the amount of work required in the long run!!

I hope this helps.

Chris

[wjcampbe]

Steve

If its offline its a path - if its online its a URL

[Doc]

HI Bill
It would be difficult to re-structure directory and folder names to fit this rule. Imagine having to change your "Program Files" folder to read "ProgramFiles" or your "actinic v7" folder to read "Actinicv7".
Most of the Web servers are Unix based and they are much more friendly to file names and pathways then even windows. I will raise this issue with W3C.

Many THanks
Steve

[dave_finlayson]

You can very easily replace all the spaces in your image names with underscores by downloading a trial of Macormedia Fireworks (other image software may do this too!) and running the batch process on the images and using the rename function. Then once you have done this you can do a find and replace within Access to do the same to update your paths to the correct filename. All in all it should not take much longer than 10 or 15 mins (excluding uploading!)

David

[pinbrook]

Ah the old spaces in filenames chestnut --

I would never use spaces (nor special characters) in folder or filenames, it is simply long term practise over a period of time. I only use - and _ or define new words with capital letters. It all makes for an easier life as you ensure you don't hit pitfalls at odd moments.

ie thisFolder, thatFolder

Its probably a throw back to programming days.

I feel it is better not to use spaces/special characters as you don't then stand the risk of getting them converted to hex values and confusing the readibility.

Your dilemma is short term pain for long term gain

[bangers]

Should without doubt change to file names without spaces as a url a space will be represented as %20% and can muck around with server and or browser settings. It is not worth risking a just to save 1/2 hour changing the file names.

There are freeware programs out their which will find and replace on filenames (you don't need to process through an image app like fireworks) which will save loads of time.
Examples:http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/sy...ilerename.html

Also if you need to make changes to your file references in Actinic you could find and replace directly in the Access database (depends how confident you are).